SSD toolboxes are quite useful for monitoring your SSD’s health, updating its firmware, and more often than not, have some other features built into them to optimize the operating system and/or boost the SSD’s performance. Almost every company has one, but one company is more well known for theirs over anyone else. Whether it is because of the sheer number of SSDs …

Before we start, I am always asked for this link to the Amazon Best Sellers List for SSDS!  It may reflect some great pricing throughout the day and is a great resource whenever one is looking for the most popular and best value SSDs. Well today’s the day and if there is any time of the year to make the …

One of the main aspects of the SSD world that stands fast is size; size is everything.  Not only have we gone from capacity at 64GB in 2007 to several TB today, but also, the ability to reduce footprint size while increasing capacity (and performance) is key.  Now… throw in value and the PNY Elite 480GB Portable SSD is going …

Without a doubt this is the year of portable storage.  Through advances in NAND flash memory, we have seen the footprint of all storage devices shrink considerably, and if they haven’t, their capacity has increased significantly.  Take a look at Samsung’s latest 960 Pro M.2 2TB SSD we recently reviewed for example.  This little baby can store 34,000 hrs of …

ADATA is announcing the launch of a new SSD under their XPG (Xtreme Performance Gear) lineup, which is dubbed as the XPG SX8000.  The XPG SX8000 is built on the M.2 X 2280 form factor, and pairs 3D MLC NAND with a Silicon Motion SMI2260 controller.  The SX8000 conforms to the NVMe 1.2 specification, and connects directly to motherboards through …

The OCZ Vector has been the top performing SATA SSD from the company for the past few years. Utilizing their proprietary Indilinx controller and most recently, Toshiba’s A19 NAND, they provided for strong performance for mainstream consumers as well as enthusiasts, but it did have its drawbacks in recent times. Since the release of the latest PCIe NVMe SSDs this year, …

Intel is announcing several new families of 3D NAND SSDs, for applications that cover consumers, business, data centers and Internet of Things (IoT).  These new SSDs are reported to be the first of many upcoming offerings that utilize Intel 3D NAND technology. In the client space, the first series is the Intel® SSD 600p Series, that are geared towards the …

SMART Modular Technologies, a leading producer of memory and storage devices, is announcing availability of samples of their new 32GB DDR4 NVDIMM-N, representing the highest density DDR4 NVDIMM-N module available in the industry today.  SMART will begin shipping samples at the end of August 2016.  This new 32GB density module dramatically improves application performance, creating an ideal solution for storage …

Making our way over to the Phison booth we were greeted with some new products. First up is the S11T, which will help OEMs and other customers reduce their BOM cost. It is an industrial grade SATA 6Gb/s controller that is DRAM-less. It supports MLC/TLC 2D and 3D NAND. It features their SmartECC, end-to-end data path protection, and SmartZip technologies. …

For those wondering what has been up with Seagate in the last few months, FMS 2016 was a real eye opener as one of the largest companies seemed to come out of Stealth mode.  Our visit to the booth was met with some very impressive hardware, the first of which is this 60TB SAS SSD which just happens to be …